


The Sound of You

by AsperJasper



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Law School, M/M, Matt deserves something good in his life and that's a fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25261813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsperJasper/pseuds/AsperJasper
Summary: Matt has a lot of Foggy memorized now. He has a few tics that Matt has picked up on, like a quick exhale from his nose when he thinks of a joke but hasn’t told it yet, or how he twists a knot into his shirtsleeves when he’s reading and not paying attention to what his hands are doing. His smell, which sounds creepy when Matt thinks about it too hard, but Foggy smells like a mixture of the laundry detergent he used, which isn’t so strong that it bothers Matt even when the scent is fresh, his shampoo, which smells like mint and tea tree oil, and usually coffee and some kind of sweet snack. Often apple turnovers, which he has for breakfast almost every morning. He has a few different voices, all very distinct, like the one that’s sleepy and scratchy when he wakes up, and the brash, confident voice he puts on when he’s flirting.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 202





	The Sound of You

Sight is overrated.

That’s a line Matt drops on people all the time when they’re being obnoxious about the fact that he’s blind, and one that he knew they all just assumed was his way of letting them know that he didn’t want pity. Which it is, there’s almost nothing as annoying as people treating him like the nine-year-old he’d been when he’d lost his sight when he’s twenty-two and had already proven plenty of times that he could take care of himself, thank you very much.

But really. Sight is overrated.

Two people can look alike. Matt knows how often seeing people had confused, for example, Alex and Jesse from the orphanage, who were identical twins. They looked so much alike that even the nuns who raised them got them confused sometimes.

That hadn’t been a problem for Matt, who had no idea what about them looked so similar. He could tell them apart no problem and had been able to for as long as he’d had control over his senses. They had different voices, for one, Alex’s was slightly higher pitched and Jesse had a very slight lisp. Jesse always washed his hands with soap, and Alex only used water, so they almost always smelled different, too. There were a million tiny clues, the way Jesse inhaled before speaking and how Alex always lied about if he’d drunk his milk at breakfast while Jesse never did, the way Jesse moved his hands and created the slight breeze Matt could feel and how Alex ran his hands through his hair every couple of minutes. Things seeing people didn’t seem to notice, but Matt did and filed away and created detailed profiles of people. That was how he interacted with the world. Scent, taste, sound, texture.

Sight is overrated.

Matt knows he’s found Room 312 before he asks the guy sitting on the bed. There had been a sign in the hall, and it even had Braille on it, so he hadn’t even had to use his heightened senses to read it. Still, he asks.

“Yeah, who you looking for?”

Matt categorizes several things at once. His roommate, Franklin P. Nelson if he’s remembering the email correctly, has recently eaten Cheetos. The bag is on the floor somewhat close to the trash can next to his desk. Long hair swishes across his shoulders. He’s looking at a laptop, and if the tension in his hands is any indication, he’s frustrated about something.

His heart rate spikes when he looks up and saw Matt.

“Oh, uh, sorry!”

“What for?”

“You’re…blind, right?”

“Uh, yeah, so they tell me.” Matt doesn’t hide his smile as he makes a show out of finding his own bed. “I hope that won’t be a problem.”

“Why would it?” Matt hears and feels Franklin sit up straighter and point at him when he sets his bag down. “Oh! You’re…you’re my roomie!”

“Matt Murdock.” Matt extends his hand, and Franklin leaps to his feet. It’s easier to get a more complete picture of him when he’s standing than when he was slouched over his computer. Shorter than Matt, and stockier. Hair down to just below his shoulders, comfortable clothes, and when he takes Matt’s hand, his hand is soft and warm.

“Foggy Nelson.”

Matt already likes him. Foggy suits him much better than Franklin, that much is already obvious.

“Wait! Matt Murdock…you’re not from Hell’s Kitchen are you?”

“Yeah. Born and raised.”

“So am I!” Foggy sounds very genuinely excited. “I heard about you, when you were a kid! What you did, saving that guy crossing the street!”

“Yeah, I just did what anyone would have,” Matt says somewhat awkwardly. That was something he’d gotten used to in Hell’s Kitchen, especially when he was younger, but it isn’t really something he expected on his first day at law school.

“Bullshit. You are a hero.” Foggy says sincerely.

He’s telling the truth, or at least really believes what he’s saying, and Matt can’t help but smile. Yeah. He likes Foggy.

“I’m really not.”

“C’mon, you got your peepers knocked out saving that old dude!”

“They didn’t get knocked out!” Matt almost laughs out loud.

“Good. Cause that would be…a little freaky. Uh, no offense.”

And that. That’s refreshing. Somebody who didn’t act like he’d have a breakdown if they didn’t treat him like a delicate little thing that couldn’t handle being reminded that he wasn’t like everyone else. He knows, okay? He’s aware. And yeah, it sucks sometimes, but it’s so much worse when people dance around it like they’re scared of him, pretending like they aren’t treating him any differently when they totally are.

“Please, none taken. Uh, most people dance around me like I’m made of glass. I hate that.”

“Yeah, you’re just a guy, right? A really, really good looking guy.”

Now that’s interesting. Foggy’s heart rate spikes again, and he blushes hard enough that Matt can feel the change of temperature. He must pause to take those things in a little too long, though, because Foggy quickly tries to move on like he hadn’t just hit on Matt a little bit.

“I mean, girls must love that, the whole…wounded, handsome duck thing.” Foggy’s breath is still slightly shaky, and his heart is still funny, and Matt is one hundred percent sure that he had not been talking for the sake of girls when he’d complimented Matt. “Am I right?”

“Yeah, it’s been known to happen. Guys, too.” He says pointedly, and he just barely manages to hide his smile at how strong Foggy’s reaction to that is.

“Well.” Foggy coughs slightly. “I, uh, I know a great spot to get coffee on campus. What say ye to going out and being each other’s wingmen? Get to know each other and find some beautiful women along the way. And…maybe men?”

“I’m not picky.”

And Foggy’s heart rate spikes again, and his palms start sweating. He licks his lips.

“You and me, Matt Murdock,” he says, still sounding light and joking even though Matt can literally taste his sweat. “Are going to be the scourges of Columbia Law.”

“Oh?”

“Picking up dates left and right. With you as my wingman? I unlock a whole new tier of people! If somebody with bone structure as godly as yours is vouching for me, my success rate will double, nay, triple!”

Matt laughs at that.

He’d been a little worried that he might end up with an asshole for a roommate. If life had taught him anything, it was that things rarely happened in Matt’s favor. Pretty much never, it felt like. So he hadn’t really let himself get his hopes up for that best-friends-for-life roommate experience. If anything, he’d been prepared to have somebody he barely tolerated at best and maybe actively avoided.

But he likes Foggy already. He leads the way to a coffee shop on campus Matt had smelled when he’d arrived, and shows off some pretty impressively terrible flirting that makes Matt laugh.

Matt hasn’t felt so carefree in a long time. It’s nice.

So yeah. He likes Foggy Nelson.

*****

Two weeks after move-in, about a week after classes start, Foggy convinces Matt to come with him to a party.

“Just think of all the hotties that will be there!” He insists in that cheerful voice that Matt has memorized.

Matt has a lot of Foggy memorized now. He has a few tics that Matt has picked up on, like a quick exhale from his nose when he thinks of a joke but hasn’t told it yet, or how he twists a knot into his shirtsleeves when he’s reading and not paying attention to what his hands are doing. His smell, which sounds creepy when Matt thinks about it too hard, but Foggy smells like a mixture of the laundry detergent he used, which isn’t so strong that it bothers Matt even when the scent is fresh, his shampoo, which smells like mint and tea tree oil, and usually coffee and some kind of sweet snack. Often apple turnovers, which he has for breakfast almost every morning. He has a few different voices, all very distinct, like the one that’s sleepy and scratchy when he wakes up, and the brash, confident voice he puts on when he’s flirting.

For only knowing him for two weeks, Matt has heard Foggy do a lot of flirting. He’s terrible at it, is the problem. It’s funny and endearing, but not all that effective, really.

Matt really did have every intention of saying no to going to a party. He’d learned in undergrad that parties are a very easy street towards overstimulation. Foggy is very convincing, though, and so Matt finds himself trailing along towards wherever the party is that Foggy heard about through a friend of a friend of a friend.

It’s loud. Matt can hear it from at least a block away. And it smells like a college party, meaning like cheap booze and sweat, mostly. The kind of noise and smell that penetrates so deep into Matt’s head that he can barely focus on the things he’d like to.

Still, Matt dutifully follows Foggy in. For a little while, he follows Foggy around, and he feels more completely blind than he has in a long time. It’s the saturation of everything, really. He can feel the building vibrate from the music and the air move as people brush past and hear the music and a million conversations at once, and the sheer number of smells and sounds and how thick the air is with a million different tastes ranging from alcohol to perfume to puke (which is impressive, considering it’s only nine pm), and unless he concentrates super hard he’s completely relying on his cane to get around. It’s slightly disorienting, even though he does know how to do it.

After a bit, he taps Foggy on the shoulder and tells him that he’s going to find a place to sit down.

“Two doors down on the left is the living room. There’s a couch! Probably no grosser than any other surface in this place.” Foggy supplies helpfully. Matt nods gratefully.

There’s another thing he likes about Foggy, the way he’s helpful but not overbearing. He’d fallen so easily into things like giving Matt basic directions to what he was looking for or telling him who’d come into wherever they were sitting (though to be completely honest Matt is pretty sure that one comes from a desire to gossip more than a desire to help Matt), but he hadn’t tried to do anything like grabbing Matt’s arm and lead him somewhere.

It’s so annoying when people do that. Not only because Matt doesn’t really need that because of his senses, but frankly because even if his other senses were normal, being blind does not equate to helplessness. Even in moments like this, when he’s slightly overwhelmed and has to focus really hard to sense anything around him with any degree of clarity, he isn’t helpless. All he needs is a basic direction like what Foggy gives him and he really can find his way.

It takes him five minutes to locate the couch, and it is definitely grosser than the other surfaces around him. It smelled pretty bad, an excellent and strong combination of spilled drinks, old vomit, and sex. Definitely sex.

Still. He’d been convinced to be here, and here he is, with a cheap beer in hand and a seat on a gross couch, and he’s going to stay here until Foggy comes to tell him he’s either going home with somebody else or that they’re leaving together.

When he’s not trying to navigate the space, it’s actually kind of fun to listen to what happening around him. There’s a very funny conversation happening in the kitchen about whether or not it would be bad to dump an entire bottle of vodka into the half-empty punch bowl, and Matt makes a note to avoid the punch because the main argument against it isn’t “that much vodka in that little punch is going to be way too much alcohol per cup” but “that’s a waste of a bottle of vodka.” At least five couples are having sex somewhere above the rest of the party, and Matt can’t help but hear it even if he definitely does not want to listen. Snatches of conversations cut through the commotion bit by bit, and he lets them drift by without focusing on one in particular. This is his version of people watching, just letting everything happen around him without trying to follow any of it.

“Now what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” The scent of Foggy’s shampoo cuts through everything, clean and fresh.

“Oh, you know. Sitting here alone, waiting for my friend to come find me again.” Matt smiles to make it obvious that he’s joking, and Foggy laughs.

“Some friend, huh?” His heart skips like he’s lying. “Why’d he leave you, anyway?”

Matt realizes it quickly and bites back a laugh.

Foggy thinks Matt didn’t realize it was him. He totally and completely thinks that Matt didn’t recognize him, and that’s hilarious. That’s so fucking funny, albeit kind of reasonable? Foggy doesn’t know, after all, that Matt’s senses are so insanely heightened that he can identify people by the way they walk and the sound of their hair and the scent of their shampoo. But still, it’s so fucking funny that his roommate just confidently sat down next to him and is now pretending to be somebody else.

“I left him, actually. Crowds can be a little overwhelming, I wanted to sit down.” He decides to play along, just to see where this is going. If only to get a really good story out of it later on.

“Kind of a dick, didn’t come with you?”

“Nah, he doesn’t need to baby me. I’m good to sit by myself. He’s great, actually.” Matt pays close attention to how that compliment makes Foggy inhale quickly and does something funny to his heart.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Best roommate a guy could ask for.”

And Matt knows, he knows, that he should tell Foggy he knows it’s him. But the thing is, he doesn’t want to. He likes the way Foggy smiles so hard he can hear it, and he likes the fact that he can feel Foggy blush and maybe it’s because he’s a little bit tipsy (though he doesn’t really think so) but he kind of wants the chance to let Foggy know how much he actually likes him without it being weird?

Why does he want that? He’s not drunk enough to think about that one.

“It’s always nice to hear good roommate stories,” Foggy says. Matt feels him settle back into the couch. “Seems like there’s usually only bad roommate stories.”

“I got pretty lucky, I guess.” Matt shifts, turning slightly so he’s facing Foggy more dead-on. “What about you? What brings you to a place like this?”

“Just here to have a good time. Meet some people, get a little drunk, you know. Get the college experience.”

“Oh, are you undergrad?”

“Law school, actually.”

“Really? Me, too. Maybe we have some classes together.”

“Maybe we do. I’ll have to keep an eye out for you.”

“I can’t do it myself, so it’ll be up to you.”

Foggy laughs.

“You’re not too hard to spot, so I don’t think finding you by myself will be too hard.”

“The glasses and cane give me away, huh?”

“I was thinking more the jawline that could kill a man and the impressive biceps to match. Captain America much?”

Matt laughs at that and very pointedly ignores how his mouth goes dry at Foggy’s flirting.

“I haven’t seen myself since I was nine, so I wouldn’t know. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Oh, trust me, you’re hot. Like, seriously smoking.” And there’s Foggy’s awkward flirting.

Foggy’s fingers dart out and gently trace Matt’s jaw, and then his hand drops to Matt’s arm and squeezes his bicep. Foggy’s heart is beating incredibly quickly.

So is Matt’s, but that’s neither here nor there.

Briefly, it seems like he’s going to lean in and kiss Matt.

And then he pulls his hand back like he was burned and stands up quickly.

“You know, I left my own roommate wandering around looking for the bathroom. I should probably make sure he found it.”

“Probably,” Matt says mildly.

Is he disappointed? He doesn’t want to know.

It’s probably a bad idea to let anything happen between him and Foggy, right? Isn’t there some kind of unspoken rule about dating your roommate? And even if Foggy isn’t trying to, say, ask him out, surely the same kind of rule applies to hooking up with your roommate at a party.

So he lets Foggy walk away without saying anything else, and when Foggy comes back five minutes later and hands him another beer, Matt pretends he doesn’t know that he’s returning and not arriving at the couch for the first time.

“I, your wayfaring roommate, have returned! I come bearing good news, and it is that the punch will now get you drunk with a single sip!”

“Are you speaking from experience here, Foggy?”

“Au contraire, mon ami, I’ve simply been enjoying watching everyone around us get totally blasted extremely quickly. Somebody’s getting puked on tonight!”

“The fact that you sound so excited about that makes me question our budding friendship, Foggy.”

“I am hurt and wounded, Matthew. You will never know the hilarity of seeing the look on somebody’s face in the moment before they’re puked on.”

“I puked on my dad, once. I remember his face. It wasn’t that funny, really.”

“Were you both drunk? If the answer is no, the experience was not the same! Allow me to describe it to you.”

And Foggy starts to wax poetic about how funny it is when somebody gets puked on, and Matt laughs, and it’s easy and comfortable.

Matt likes Foggy. For once, the universe is kind to him and gives him a friend who makes him laugh and treats him like just another person, and Matt likes that, too.

But mostly, Matt likes Foggy.

*****

The first time Matt has a nightmare at Colombia, he does his best to stay quiet enough to not wake Foggy up.

Nightmares are terrible things. All of his dreams are strange, shifting landscapes, partly made of memories, things he’d seen when he was young, and partly made of the way he perceives the world now, the hard to describe three-sixty sense he had of what was around him.

Nightmares are awful, though. He doesn’t have as many now as he used to, but they’re just as bad as they ever were, if not worse.

A month and a half into school, though, he wakes up from a nightmare and it was definitely a bad one and he’s definitely breathing funny.

He can’t put his finger on what the nightmare was, exactly, but the panic and adrenaline are rushing through him full force. Vague, blurry pictures, memories that were fading around the edges, drift through his thoughts. His dad’s face, a crack in the wall of the apartment he grew up in, a bloody cut, the boxing ring. Even though he knows he it isn’t actually there, the scent and taste of blood is so thick he’s gagging on it.

When his senses betray him, it’s awful. It’s so disorienting, laying in bed when he knows there isn’t blood everywhere and he knows where everything in the room is, but he can’t actually sense any of it because his head is full of noise and everything is spinning in waves of panic.

“Matt?”

It’s Foggy’s voice, scratchy from sleep, that finally manages to cut through the noise in his head.

“Matt? You okay?”

Matt tries to say yes, he’s fine, go back to sleep. What comes out instead is a dry, choked sob. He faintly registers Foggy getting out of bed and crossing the room.

“What’s wrong, Matt? What’s happening?” And he sounds so concerned, and that, for some reason, makes Matt feel even worse. “Is this a panic attack, Matt?”

_What gave it away?_ Matt thinks.

He manages to nod, and he feels Foggy exhale.

“Okay. Okay, what can I do to help? I…can I get you water or something? Does that help?” He doesn’t really wait for an answer, bouncing back up to his feet and hurrying out of the room. When he gets back, pressing a cold water bottle into Matt’s hand, Matt has managed to calm himself down enough to unclench his fists from the sheets and sit up to take a drink.

The water tastes like blood.

“Jesus, Matt, you’re bleeding!”

Ah. That might be why. Maybe his senses aren’t as screwy as they feel right now.

And once Foggy says that he can feel where he bit the inside of his cheek.

“I just bit my tongue,” he says quietly. “I’m fine.”

Foggy sits on the edge of Matt’s bed.

“Are you sure? I can…I have peroxide somewhere, I think, or-“

“I’m okay, Foggy, I just bit my tongue. It’ll stop in a second.” He takes another drink, and it tastes less like blood. Things are starting to get clearer as his thoughts calm down, he can make sense of the things he’s taking in again.

“Does that happen often?” Foggy asks after a minute.

“Not usually. I, um, I had a nightmare.” Matt shakes his head and gives Foggy a small smile. “Sorry I woke you up.”

“Don’t apologize.” Foggy gently touches Matt’s knee. “You’re allowed to ask for help, you know.”

“I know.”

“Cause I’m your friend. And I want to help.”

“I know, Foggy.”

“And I know you don’t always need help and also that I can’t always help, but you can always ask, and I’ll do my best.”

Matt reaches out and takes Foggy’s hand, squeezing it.

“Thanks, Foggy,” he says, very quietly.

It’s hard for him to admit when he needs help. He’s a fiercely independent person, something born out of years of people thinking that he couldn’t possibly be, and he likes to do things on his own, even when he might benefit from somebody else being there. And in this case, really, there wasn’t much Foggy could have done. Panic attacks are panic attacks, caused by nightmares or not, and there isn’t much that Matt knows how to do to help them other than just waiting them out.

The water was nice, though. _Foggy_ is nice. Foggy means well, and he’s telling the truth when he says that he’s Matt’s friend and that he _wants_ to help.

That’s…it’s sweet. It’s nice. It means a lot to Matt, it really does, and maybe it’s because his emotions are still a little fragile from coming down from his panic, but he feels himself start to cry.

“Oh, oh, hey, Matt.” Foggy pulls his hand off of Matt’s knee, and then he’s wrapping Matt in a tight hug.

It’s been a long time since Matt was hugged.

He hadn’t realized it, because he doesn’t often think about hugs at all, but as soon as Foggy’s arms are wrapped around him he practically melts into the hug and starts crying for real.

Is this embarrassing?

It isn’t, Matt decides, which makes him laugh through his tears because this should definitely be embarrassing. He’s known Foggy for less than two months, and he’s literally crying into his arms on his twin bed. This should definitely, definitely be completely embarrassing.

Instead, though, it’s comforting.

Foggy is a good hugger, Matt thinks, and he’s solid and warm and Matt doesn’t need super senses to tell him that. In fact, he can just ignore his senses and let Foggy hold him and it’s more grounding than it has any right to be.

Foggy doesn’t say anything, either, he just holds Matt until Matt stops crying and his breathing evens out again, and this time he doesn’t feel even the lingering edge of the panic.

“Better out than in,” Foggy whispers when Matt’s been quiet for a few minutes. “That’s what my mom always says.”

“About puking, maybe.”

They both laugh, and Matt sits up. Foggy lets go, and Matt misses the warmth.

It should be awkward, really, but it isn’t. Not at all.

Foggy gently punches Matt’s shoulder and slides off the bed.

Matt takes one more drink of water before lying down to try and go back to sleep.

It doesn’t taste like blood this time.

He listens to Foggy’s breathing and knows that Foggy doesn’t fall back asleep for almost a half-hour.

And the next day, when they walk into Matt’s least favorite lecture hall together and he obviously knows that there are tears in the carpet and students’ bags strewn everywhere like a blind man doesn’t have to find a seat, Matt silently takes Foggy’s arm and folds up his cane.

He hears Foggy smile so hard it almost sounds like it hurts.

*****

Matt’s secret comes out when he and Foggy are drunk in their dorm room celebrating their last midterm of their second semester of law school.

He tells himself it’s an accident, but it isn’t, really. He’s drunk, but he’ll remember this in the morning and so will Foggy.

“Sorry, I just nodded,” Foggy says, laughing, and it slips out of Matt.

On accident, on accident, he tells himself.

“I know,” he tells Foggy.

“What?” Foggy is confused, and it makes Matt laugh out of apprehension more than anything else because now he has to explain himself and damn if that doesn’t open the door for some friendship ruining talk.

“I can tell when you nod,” Matt says, and his own heart rate spikes even though Foggy’s stays steady.

He’s never told anyone this. Ever. Any of the nuns who’d known had figured it out themselves, Stick had known without Matt telling him. And it would always, always be one of his biggest regrets that he’d never told his dad when he had a chance.

“Are…are you not blind?” Foggy asks cautiously.

“I’m…my eyes are blind.”

There’s enough alcohol in him that finding the words is hard and not enough that he doesn’t care.

“So what do you mean you know when I nod?”

“I…I can, uh, hear it. And feel it, sometimes. And…it’s like…I guess like echolocation?”

He knows that if he were sober, he’d be much more eloquent.

He also knows that if he were sober, he never would have been brave enough to try to tell Foggy at all. He also knows that he’s glad he’s trying to tell Foggy because of how much he likes Foggy and how much he desperately wants to keep this friendship present in his life because of how much he likes Foggy. And he knows that being honest is a good and important step in that, even if he hates the way he can’t find the words and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. He knows the longer he waits the harder it will be to do, and so he knows that he’s glad to be just this drunk.

“Dude. Like a bat?”

“Or a dolphin.”

Foggy laughs, and it relaxes Matt a little bit.

“Is it…I mean, like, it’s a superpower? Like…okay. Chemicals get all up in your face and then you’re blind but surprise, you get some badass superpowers to make up for it?”

And that’s…well, yeah, kind of. Pretty much, in fact. Foggy is taking this a lot more calmly than Matt ever would have dared to hope.

“Um…yeah. Pretty much.”

He doesn’t bring up Stick. The fact that he can fight like nobody else. He doesn’t bring up the fact that he can hear heartbeats and feel body heat and tell about how a person is feeling, because that would mean having to address the fact that he knows how Foggy reacts whenever the subject of Matt’s bisexuality comes up, and having to address the fact that he knows pretty much without a doubt that at the very least Foggy is attracted to him, even after all these months of knowing each other.

“That’s kinda sick,” Foggy says.

He might be a little bit drunker than Matt.

“Okay…okay, like…okay,” Foggy says after a few seconds of silence. “How…okay, how does it work? Like…how many fingers am I holding up?”

Matt laughs.

“Three and your thumb. Left hand.”

“Shit. You…huh. So you know what’s in a room?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn…what’s it look like?”

“It doesn’t _look_ like anything. I’m really blind, Foggy, my eyes?” Matt waved a hand across his face. “Nope. Just…every other sense works really well. So I know what’s going on even though I can’t see it.”

“All of your senses?”

Matt nods, and before he even finishes nodding a small object is flying through the air towards him. He catches it without thinking.

A hacky-sack.

Foggy lets out a startled laugh, and now his heart rate is rising.

“How’d you do that?”

“I could hear it coming. Smell it coming. And feel it. Like a breeze.”

“Shit, Matt.”

Foggy’s silent for a minute.

“I have a superhero for a roommate,” he says after a minute. He doesn’t sound upset. More introspective than anything. “Dude…I’m guessing you probably don’t want to broadcast that, but that could be such a banger pickup tactic. Hey, I’m Foggy Nelson and my best friend has superpowers.”

“Somehow I feel like that might work better for me than you.”

“Hey, I’m sexy Matt Murdock and I have superpowers. I can hear how to make you feel good.” 

Matt laughs at that, and Foggy brings him another drink and sits next to him on his bed.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Matt says, and Foggy bumps their shoulders together gently.

“I get it. You know, the whole-“ his voices goes deep and gruff and ridiculous. “‘You never know who you can trust’ thing. At least I didn’t find out because of like, I dunno, you dressing up like something ridiculous and getting killed in costume or something.”

“No, none of that. I just…just have some pretty fucking intense senses.”

“Not your eyes though. Those ain’t shit.”

“No, no they ain’t.”

And things are pretty normal after that.

It’s almost weird how weird it isn’t. Foggy doesn’t seem to change at all, not in the way he acts towards Matt or in general. His attitude just…doesn’t change.

That’s strange. Because even if Matt had told him, it feels like Foggy should be upset it took so long. He just isn’t, though, although now he has an entire arsenal of new jokes and he suddenly really enjoys throwing things at Matt from across the room.

Kind of a lot, in fact.

“What the hell, Foggy?” Matt says at what feels like the middle of the night when he’s woken up by something hitting him in the head.

“I have a question of great importance, Matthew, and I could not wait until morning.”

“What?”

“Do you know what color my hair is?”

“You’re waking me up at…”

“Two am.”

“Two am to ask if I know what color your hair is?”

“I just realized! I’ve never described myself to you. Do your superpowers mean you can tell?”

“No, Foggy, I can’t smell what color your hair is.”

“Okay, so I’m five nine, I have light brown eyes, and I’m blond.”

“Great, can I go back to sleep now?”

“You have brown hair and brown eyes.”

“Foggy, I went blind when I was nine. I have a vague understanding of what I look with.”

“And? You’re hot. I’ve said that before. Figured you should know.”

Foggy’s heartbeat skips, and he takes a funny little breath. Not like a lie, though, when Foggy lies his palms sweat and his heart more than skips a beat, it becomes its own little percussion session. He’s nervous.

“Pretty sure that was one of the first things you ever said to me, yeah.”

“Great. Just making sure. Can’t have you wandering around thinking you’re a mere mortal among other mortals.”

“Clearly I’m a god among men.” Matt yawns, and Foggy laughs.

“Very much so, dear Murdock. Now you can go back to sleep. My curiosity is satisfied.”

“Thanks so much for your graciousness.” Matt smiles to himself.

He likes Foggy, even at two am when he wakes Matt up with projectiles to the head and slightly ridiculous questions.

“Oh, I’m nothing if not the best roommate in the world, Matt,” Foggy says, and then he’s quiet for long enough Matt thinks he must be close to asleep. “Can you hear this?” He whispers, so far under his breath there’s no way anyone but Matt would be able to hear it.

“Yes, Foggy, I can hear that.”

“Fucking batshit.”

And then he actually does fall asleep, and Matt listens to his breathing even out and slow down and falls asleep with a slight smile on his face, thinking about how for once in his life he’s gotten lucky and how much he likes Foggy Nelson.

*****

Matt meets Elektra and is swept away in a whirlwind. A frantic, heady, insane whirlwind that he can’t get out of and doesn’t really want to.

He can tell Foggy is concerned, concerned by Matt missing class and staying out all night and not seeming to think straight.

He doesn’t say anything, though. He gives Matt his notes for the classes they share and asks if somebody gave him notes for the classes they don’t, and Matt notices that the supply of tea and cranberry juice in their dorm never seems to run out, even though Matt never buys more and he knows for a fact that Foggy doesn’t drink enough of either to buy it himself, usually.

Matt knows, he does, that what he’s doing is stupid. That he’s throwing himself over a cliff for a girl he just barely knows, a girl who seems to be able to read him better than anyone else he’s ever met, and he knows that’s dangerous. He does.

But it’s fun. It’s a heady breath of freedom like he’s never let himself have before, and never known he’s wanted, because he’s always functioned best with structure. With prayer and studying and scheduled out days, not running wild through the city like nobody can see him and doing crazy, stupid things because Elektra dares him to and he just can’t say no.

When she leaves, he sleeps for two days.

Foggy piles notes on his desk and makes a point of being quiet when he comes in. He leaves food for Matt and gives a contented hum when he sees Matt has eaten some of it.

Most importantly, when Matt gets out of bed, he doesn’t ask. He bounces right back to normal, just the usual happy, slightly goofy Foggy Nelson that Matt likes so much, and that makes it so much easier to move on.

Matt likes Foggy even more for that, which is hard, because he already likes Foggy so much.

*****  
When Foggy asks Matt if he wants to come to the Nelson house for Christmas, his heart is doing the little pitter-patter of nerves it does, and Matt is so overwhelmed by the question that he almost doesn’t even register it.

Last year, he’d stayed in the dorm and taken a class over break. It had been fine, really, even though he’d been lonely. It was funny, how lonely he’d been, but the entire time he’d found himself missing Foggy’s running commentary and being dragged out of the dorm at least once a week.

He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that this year, but he’d resigned himself to it, at least.

“I mean, you don’t have to!” Foggy’s quick to continue when Matt doesn’t immediately find the words. “I just mentioned at Thanksgiving that you might want to and I mean my whole family wants to meet you and we always have room so I thought I’d ask and I guess that’s kinda weird and all but you know you’re my best friend and I like being around you and I think you’ll like my family but I guess they’re kind of a lot and-“

“I’d love to come for Christmas,” Matt says abruptly.

Foggy beams.

“Really? Excellent! I’ll have my mom order you a shirt!”

He’s not lying, and Matt briefly wonders what he’s gotten himself into. Not for long, though, because really?

He’s excited.

Foggy’s family did something right with their son, and they must be good people, and they want to meet him, and they want him around for Christmas, and that?

That’s a wonderful thing.

The Nelson apartment on Christmas Eve is warm. It’s full of people, and smells vaguely of meat from the shop downstairs, but mostly it smells like the food everyone is eating, and coffee and cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s loud, like every party Matt’s ever been to, but every snippet of conversation is something cheerful.

“Somebody will get into a fistfight by the end of the night,” Foggy says, patting Matt’s elbow. “But for now, drink and be merry, for we’re together with family, and isn’t that the most important thing?”

Foggy knows that he doesn’t need to lead Matt, but he still doesn’t question it when Matt takes his arm. He knows that Matt doesn’t want everyone to know about his senses, and so he keeps up the act. He leads Matt from room to room, introducing him as they go.

“My roommate, Matt!” He must say it, same inflection every time, at least forty times in the first half-hour they’re there.

“Of course he is! It’s so lovely to finally meet you, Matt, Franklin’s had so much to say about you!”

“Matt, this is my mom!”

Foggy’s mom takes Matt’s hand and shakes it for what feels like forever. Her hands are just as soft and warm as her son’s.

“Now, you’re the only one who isn’t wearing his shirt! I have one for you, come, come!”

The shirt is a material that Matt would never wear on his own, some kind of cotton blend that’s scratchy enough to be annoying, but he can’t refuse it when he hears how excited Mrs. Nelson is to give it to him and when he hears Foggy laugh at the sight of him.

“Describe it for me, Foggy,” he says, and he can’t help the smile on his face.

“Oh, it’s hideous, but it’s okay because literally every single person you’ve heard so far tonight is wearing the same one. It’s bright green, and the front says ‘A Nelson Family Christmas 2011’ on it in bright red with a cartoon Christmas tree, and the back has a very blurry family photo, which you’re not in because we took it at Easter.”

“Incredible.”

“Painful to look at, but full of family holiday spirit.”

The entire night is full of laughter and warmth and more good food than Matt can remember having at one time in his entire life. Foggy is at his arm the entire time, and he’s comfortable. Happy.

Even though Matt taking a class over winter break and is still staying in their dorm, Foggy insists that he stays in the Nelson home for at least tonight, and Matt falls asleep in Foggy’s bed because Foggy would not let Matt take the floor, a smile stuck on his face that he can’t get rid of. Because he knew he likes Foggy before he came for Christmas, and now he can say with confidence.

He likes the whole Nelson family.

*****

The realization comes crashing over Matt all at once.

He’s slightly drunk on a Friday night at Josie’s Bar, which Matt and Foggy found halfway through second semester first year. It always smells just a little bit like piss and puke, but it’s cheap and at this point, a year and a half in, they’ve spent enough time here for it to have a home-away-from-home feel. Matt could recognize the Josie's piss-and-puke smell out of a thousand bars with similar scents.

Matt is only slightly drunk because Foggy dragged him here on a Tuesday because his…whatever he had with Marci has been ended officially and completely.

Matt had thought it had been ended officially and completely at least a month ago, when Foggy stopped coming home late and smelling like sex or not coming home at all once a week, but apparently there had still been a chance for booty calls until today, when she’d called that off, too.

Matt doesn’t entirely understand what their situation was before today, to be completely honest. But Foggy is his friend and Foggy needs to get wasted, so he can dutifully go with him to Josie’s and drink on a Tuesday night.

Foggy is well on his way to being wasted.

Matt is just past tipsy, at the point where if he tries to send his focus out past the room he’s in he gets disoriented. He keeps hearing snatches of conversations from all around them, and if Foggy wasn’t so engaging when he was drunk, Matt would probably be doing the thing Foggy calls “the Murdock twitch,” where he keeps turning his head slightly towards what he’s hearing and making a face.

Foggy, though, Foggy is talking and Matt can’t help but listen to him, and so he isn’t really paying attention to the random things he’s hearing.

Instead, he’s paying attention to Foggy.

He’s listening to Foggy: talking about Marci and about school and about family and about some plan he has to mess with something in the dorm and about anything and everything, really, because Foggy is a very chatty drunk, and he is. Drunk.

He’s feeling, Foggy, too: the way he moves his hands while he talks, how he occasionally reaches out to push Matt’s shoulder or touch Matt’s knee when he makes a point, how he exhales dramatically during every pause.

And smelling Foggy: the sweet drink he’s almost finished with, his mint and tea tree oil shampoo, the slight sweat, his laundry detergent, everything about him that makes him so identifiable as Foggy but combined with the scent of getting drunk at Josie’s.

And, when he takes a breath in through his mouth, he can taste Foggy, too: not just the cigarette smoke that just drifted in from outside when the door opened, or the sticky, slightly disgusting humidity of the bar as a whole, but he tastes Foggy’s sweet drink and the faintest hint of Foggy’s toothpaste and probably some of that humidity is Foggy’s sweat.

Matt likes Foggy, he’s known that since the first five minutes they met. They’re the only room he knows who met as random first-year roommates and liked each other enough to stick together for all of law school. He likes Foggy an awful lot, and so it’s easy to focus on him, even though he’s drunk enough that it probably wouldn’t be easy to focus on anyone else.

Matt watches Foggy, as much as he can watch anyone, and, as he laughs easily like he doesn’t around anyone else, and as he feels Foggy lean against him when he’s laughing too hard for his drunk body to stay upright, and as he takes in all of Foggy at once like nobody else in the world can, the realization hits him like lightning.

It’s like…

Matt likes to organize his thoughts before he speaks, to take a moment and make sure he knows what he’s saying, and so he tries to organize his thoughts about Foggy.

He thinks about the first time they met, about how Foggy had called him a hero and believed it and about how Foggy had right away started treating him completely normally even when all of the people around them had at first insisted on treating him like he was fragile at best and stupid and undeserving of his place at Columbia at worst. He thinks about Foggy’s indignation every time somebody says something rude, and his willingness to be the one to stand up for Matt even when Matt doesn’t ask him to. He thinks about Foggy inviting him for Christmas and then Easter and then for a bunch of family activities over the summer. He thinks about telling Foggy about how his senses work and how Foggy just took it in stride and doesn’t treat Matt any differently because of it. He thinks about the weird pit he gets in his stomach when Foggy talks about Marci. The way his mouth goes dry when Foggy compliments him. The way, right now, he’s leaning into Foggy’s every touch, how every burst of contact sends a jittery, electric jolt down his spine.

It’s like…

The best way Matt had to describe the way he felt about Elektra was love, but that was hot and fiery and impulsive and wild, and that isn’t how Matt feels about Foggy, not at all. When he was with Elektra it was all fast-moving, all bad decisions and impulse and shutting off his brain to follow along.

That isn’t how Matt feels about Foggy.

Not at all.

But it’s like…

Matt’s thoughts organize themself into something easy and simple to understand with one more memory, with the thought of how Foggy never gets frustrated when Matt accidentally wakes him up when he’s panicking from a nightmare and instead just always moves over to Matt’s bed and smooths his hair and tells him everything is okay and never forces Matt to talk about it, he’s just…there, and that warm, soft feeling that Matt gets when he comes down from the panic and Foggy is just holding him is the same warm, soft feeling of Foggy’s entire family at Christmas and Easter and even just Foggy’s immediate family, his brother and parents and him when Matt comes for dinner.

It’s like that. Exactly like that. Exactly like that warmth and comfort and softness, that’s how Matt feels about Foggy, and he’s spent two years telling himself he likes Foggy, but that isn’t it exactly. It hasn’t been…it hasn’t been for a pretty long time.

Matt likes Foggy. That stable and certain and true, yes.

But Matt…he loves Foggy.

And not in the casual way they say it sometimes, the way Foggy says “love you buddy” on the way out the door and how Matt has found it easier and easier to say it back just as casually. Not like that.

Like…

Maybe like he kind of wants to kiss Foggy.

Maybe like he’s remembering that party right after they met when Foggy had pretended to not be Foggy and flirted with Matt and in the brief moment when Matt had thought Foggy was going to kiss him, he hadn’t been anything other than anticipatory, even though he also hadn’t been upset when it hadn’t happened.

Maybe like Foggy is his best friend but if he wanted to add something else on top of that, Matt wanted that too.

And Foggy is drunk and falling against Matt’s side and it’s definitely pretty unbelievable to anyone who looks at them that Foggy is leading Matt and not the other way around, but that’s okay, because Foggy has cheered himself up, and they’re both laughing when they stumble their way into the dorm, and Matt gently pushes Foggy into bed and laughs again at his vague, sleepy protests, and Matt lies in bed and listens to him fall asleep, and even though it maybe should be such a happy thing to realize that you’re in love with your best friend, Matt can’t quite wipe the smile off his face.

Because it’s late, and he’s still a little drunk, and he’s tired, but he likes Foggy. And he loves Foggy.

*****

It’s ridiculous, how it finally happens.

Matt is sitting on his bed, running his fingers over a Braille textbook that cost way too much money but the professor absolutely refused to let him use an online textbook because he’s an evil old bastard who actively works to make Matt’s life harder because he doesn’t think disabled people should be allowed in law school, which Matt knows because Foggy got mad at him once and asked him as much and he’d been lying lying lying when he’d denied it. Technically, since the textbook comes in Braille and he’d been given the information he needed to get it in Braille, he’d been given accommodations, but the spirit of the thing was still stupid.

He’s alone in the room because Foggy had gone to make a snack run, and he takes a sighing moment to tip his head back against the wall and stop thinking about this goddamn final.

He’s making Foggy study with him even though there are still two weeks until finals start because he knows that Foggy will wait until the night before otherwise and when Foggy gets that stressed, Matt can’t help but get stressed, too.

That doesn’t mean studying isn’t stressful, anyway. There’s just so much information to take in and remember, and the fact that this is their second to last semester has not flown over Matt’s head. Part of him is glad for that, only a few more months of paying tuition and sitting through so many classes and getting stressed out of tests. But it also means that one, if he fails this final he’s probably not graduating on time, and two, this life that he’s gotten so comfortable with is changing, and three, he has to figure out how to pay for an apartment. All three of those things are stressing him out.

“All right, snack break time, I have…Swedish Fish for the gentleman, and a diet coke to go with it.”

“Thanks, Fogg.”

“I used your id to pay for everything so thank you, Mr. Murdock. Your treat.”

“There goes my laundry budget for the week. Have fun smelling that later.”

Foggy laughs and hops up Matt’s bed, and he leans into Matt’s shoulder and runs his own fingers down Matt’s page.

“Hmm.”

“Get anything out of that?”

“It says ‘Matthew Michael Murdock is a nerd who would rather be studying on a Friday night than out at any of the ten parties in this very building’ and I agree with the sentiment whole-heartedly.”

“It definitely does not say that.” Matt laughs. “And there are not ten parties in this building right now, there’s two, and both of them are miserable.”

“Oh, are you superhero eavesdropping on them right now? Are you going to tell me how miserable everyone at both parties is?”

“Well, the people aren’t miserable at both. One sounds like it’s about two minutes away from a brawl. The other is rapidly turning into an…uh…”

“A what? A great, drunken time?”

“Oh, they’re drunk all right. Losing clothes left and right, too.”

“Oh my god, is there an orgy happening in this building right now?”

“I’m ninety percent sure they’re just playing strip poker right now.”

“Maaaaaattt…we could be getting drunk and playing strip poker right now, and you want to study?” Foggy sounds so convincingly sad and pouty that even though Matt has never actually seen his face he can picture the expression flawlessly.

“I’m not very good at cards, Foggy, since I can’t see them.”

“But you can tell when people lie, so we’d kick ass at poker if we worked together, and we could be getting drunk and naked right now? That’s so much better than studying, Matt!”

“We’ll have plenty of time to get drunk after finals, you know.”

“And play strip poker?” Foggy says hopefully.

“If you want to make a deck of cards I can play with, sure.”

“Oh, hell yeah.”

And Foggy dutifully picks up his own textbook and continues going through where they left off before he went to get snacks.

Since Matt is staying in the dorm over break like usual, Foggy gets away without having to do the break move-out that most people do. His bed can stay pushed against the wall, no RA has to come check the fridge, and he can leave his bedding right where it is. His ID won’t let him in during break, and he’d technically be a guest if he ever came over to hang out with Matt, but for all other intents and purposes, he didn’t have to move out at all.

So when Foggy signs out of the dorm on Friday afternoon, Matt promptly signs him back in as a guest so they can get drunk and celebrate closing out semester five of law school with at least as much success as the previous four.

“One more to go, buddy,” Foggy says, bumping a solo cup full of vodka and coke against Matt’s. “Four more months.”

“Five more classes.”

“We can do this.”

The mood, in this little party of two, is a strange combination of somber and relievedly happy. Matt can tell Foggy is having the same anxieties he is about life after law school, but it’s hard to be just worried when they’re done with this semester.

“I have a present for you, my friend,” Foggy says in the voice he usually reserves for pulling a prank on somebody, which immediately puts Matt’s guard up.

“What?”

“No need to sound so suspicious, Matt, it’s just a gift. Out of the goodness of my heart.”

“I’m sure.”

Foggy pulls a small package out of his back pocket and tosses it towards Matt. He recognizes it as soon as he catches it, and Foggy laughs.

“God bless puff paint and the internet. You, Matt, are learning the art of strip poker tonight!”

He’s used puff paint to put Braille numbers on every card.

“You’re pretty smart but just in case, K is king, Q is queen, and J is jack.”

“Okay.”

And Foggy teaches him to play poker. Normal poker first, playing for random things Foggy collects from around the room like paperclips and pencil cap erasers, and once he’s satisfied with Matt’s understanding of the game, he announces that they’re now playing strip poker.

His heart, Matt notices, is doing the little pit-pat skip it does when he’s nervous, even though his voice is all brash confidence.

Matt knows, on an objective and observational level, that Foggy is attracted to him. He’s known that since the first day they met, when Foggy hit on him in the first five minutes. There’s a difference, though, between Foggy being attracted to Matt and Foggy being in love with Matt.

Matt is in love with Foggy. He’s spent the last semester, since his crashing realization at Josie’s, trying to feel out if Foggy feels the same way.

When he loses his first hand of strip poker, it’s because he still doesn’t completely know how to play and because he’s too distracted by Foggy’s already pit-pattering heartbeat to notice that Foggy is lying.

He doesn’t miss, though, when he pulls his shirt over his head, the way Foggy draws in a quick breath and mutters “holy shit” under his breath and his palms get sweaty and he has to cough before he can make a joke.

Usually, Matt thinks through his words before he says anything.

Now, though, as soon as the question pops into his head and he knows that he wants to ask it, he just does.

“Can I kiss you, Foggy?”

They’re both tipsy. Not drunk, not really, they’re both on their second cup but barely a few sips in, but tipsy enough that Matt’s filter is shut off, clearly.

Foggy’s heart rate shoots up so fast Matt briefly wonders if he’s having a heart attack, and then Foggy’s cards are discarded in a mess on the floor and he’s launching himself at Matt and kissing him. Aggressively.

Matt doesn’t mind.

Like things have been before with Foggy, it’s almost weird how not weird it is, really.

It’s so strangely natural, like it’s just the next step and exactly how it always would have been, to kiss Foggy back just as aggressively, to slide his hands up underneath Foggy’s shirt to even the playing field since he’s not even wearing one, and even though he isn’t so tipsy that his senses are disorienting to him, his entire world narrows down to Foggy, Foggy, Foggy.

They wake up tangled together in Matt’s bed in the morning, and before Foggy leaves to meet his mom for lunch since he’s going home for break for real today, he kisses Matt soft and sweet.

Matt can feel his smile against his lips. It’s his new favorite feeling, he decides.

*****

Matt spends Christmas with the Nelsons again, and just like Easter and last Christmas, it’s warm and comforting and happy like nothing else has been.

Matt is given another t-shirt, and Foggy gleefully informs him that he’s in the family picture on the back this year, because he was at Easter dinner.

Foggy holds his hand instead of his elbow and Matt isn’t entirely sure if he’s leading Matt around or just holding his hand, and he honestly couldn’t care less.

This time, when he stays the night because who is he to try and get out of Christmas breakfast before he goes to mass, Foggy climbs right into bed with him. He wraps his arms around Matt from behind, and Matt settles back into him.

“I love you,” Foggy says right before Matt is asleep, and his heart is steady. Truth.

“You, too,” Matt whispers back, and he falls asleep easily.

He warns Foggy in the morning that Theo is rapidly approaching from the hallway, and Foggy kisses his nose and informs him that if he wants to date a Nelson he has to go through the Nelson family hazing, whether he’s blind or not, and so he allows himself to be pulled out of bed by Theo while Foggy laughs and he has to take a quiz on Foggy and he gets every answer right except for what brand of shampoo he uses, because all Matt knows about Foggy’s shampoo is that it smells like mint and tea tree oil and he could pick the scent out of a million shampoos but he has no idea what brand it is.

It’s silly and everyone is laughing at him and in general, and it’s just as warm and comforting and _loving_ as everything around Foggy and his family is.

And Matt basks in that. He holds Foggy’s hand under the table during breakfast, running his thumb along Foggy’s knuckles, and lets his world and focus narrow to just this. Just this moment, just this table in this apartment, piled high with more food than they will ever be able to meet and he knows he’ll be taking a pile of it home to the dorm with him.

It so easy to tip back in his chair and laugh at Theo’s jokes, which are even worse than Foggy’s, and assure Anna Nelson that he’s sure he’s had enough to eat and yes ma’am he’ll make sure he’s eating enough at school, too, and to just take in how…enough. How enough everything is right now.

And he knows, he does, that this can’t possibly be how it is forever. That in four months he and Foggy will have to start making their own way in the world and that he’s a little bit scared about what that really means.

But for now?

For this moment.

Everything is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello! I'm Asper and I'm brand brand new to this fandom but what happened is I watched all of Daredevil and The Defenders in a week and feel in love with Matt Murdock and now i can't help but write fic because what better way is there to express love for a show and characters than write about them? idk how good this is or anything like that, but you know what? I like it and that's enough to post it, so there!
> 
> Comments are much appreciated, or if you want to talk to me directly, my Tumblr is @loving-jack-kelly!


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